THE PRESIDENT'S ACQUITTAL: THE OVERVIEW; CLINTON ACQUITTED DECISIVELY: NO MAJORITY FOR EITHER CHARGE

The Senate today acquitted President Clinton on two articles of impeachment, falling short of even a majority vote on either of the charges against him: perjury and obstruction of justice.

After a harrowing year of scandal and investigation, the five-week-long Senate trial of the President -- only the second in the 210-year history of the Republic -- culminated shortly after noon when the roll calls began that would determine Mr. Clinton's fate.

''Is respondent William Jefferson Clinton guilty or not guilty?'' asked Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, in his gold-striped black robe. In a hushed chamber, with senators standing one by one to pronounce Mr. Clinton ''guilty'' or ''not guilty,'' the Senate rejected the charge of perjury, 55 to 45, with 10 Republicans voting against conviction.

It then split 50-50 on a second article accusing Mr. Clinton of obstruction of justice in concealing his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. Five Republicans broke ranks on the obstruction-of-justice charge. No Democrats voted to convict on either charge, and it would have taken a dozen of them, and all 55 Republicans, to reach the two-thirds majority of 67 senators required for conviction.

Chief Justice Rehnquist announced the acquittal of the nation's 42d President at 12:39 P.M. ''It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said William Jefferson Clinton be, and he hereby is, acquitted of the charges in the said articles,'' he said. Almost immediately, the mood in the Senate lightened.

As required by the Senate's impeachment rules, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was formally notified of the Senate's judgment.

Mr. Clinton responded by once again declaring himself ''profoundly sorry'' for his actions and words that had thrown the nation into a 13-month ordeal. ''Now I ask all Americans, and I hope all Americans here in Washington and throughout our land, will re-dedicate ourselves to the work of serving our nation and building our future together,'' he said in a brief appearance in the White House Rose Garden.

Yet for all the hopes of healing, the bitterness and turmoil of the past months were underscored when the Senate side of the Capitol had to be cleared for more than an hour because of a bomb scare shortly after the trial had ended, just as senators had begun a series of news conferences. [Excerpts, pages A13-14.]

Just before the bomb scare, the Senate, by a 56-to-43 vote, rebuffed an effort by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, to force a vote today on a censure measure that would rebuke Mr. Clinton for ''shameful, reckless and indefensible'' behavior.

Even many of those who chose to acquit Mr. Clinton today delivered stinging judgments of him while concluding that his evasions and attempts to conceal a sexual relationship with a former White House intern did not constitute the kind of high crimes the nation's founders had contemplated when they wrote the impeachment clause of the Constitution.

''In voting to acquit the President, I do so with grave misgivings for I do not mean in any way to exonerate this man,'' Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the Republicans to break with her party, said in a statement.

''He lied under oath,'' she said, ''He sought to interfere with the evidence; he tried to influence the testimony of key witnesses. And while it may not be a crime, he exploited a very young star-struck employee whom he then proceeded to smear in an attempt to destroy her credibility, her reputation, her life.''

Some of the Democrats who had stayed so staunchly at Mr. Clinton's side throughout the impeachment saga warned that he should not see his acquittal as political vindication. ''This has been a long, tortured trial,' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota. ''There are no winners. The President should take no solace from this.''

The Republicans who wanted to remove him from office were far harsher, raising questions of how Mr. Clinton and the Congressional majority that pursued his impeachment will ever reconcile over the remaining two years of Mr. Clinton's term.

Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, called Mr. Clinton a man ''with a capacity to lie about anything.'' And Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, quoted the words of the novelist William Faulkner to make clear his profound distrust of Mr. Clinton. ''One of the sayings that's always guided my life is, 'I will witness your advent and judge of your sincerity,' '' he told reporters. ''I guess you could say, in a little bit more of a Reagan way, 'trust and verify.' ''

Until now the only impeachment trial of a President had taken place in 1868 when Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote. That trial left in its wake a weakened Presidency and came to be viewed over time as a partisan vendetta, a term many Democrats applied to this case, too.

It will now be up to historians to judge what happened in this impeachment, the first one to be conducted under the independent counsel law enacted after Watergate. For now the impeachment drive has left the Republican Party at record lows in public opinion polls, while Mr. Clinton has retained some of the highest job approval ratings of his Presidency. But many in both parties believe that public opinion could shift with the passage of time, once Mr. Clinton is out of danger of removal.

Far from ending the national ordeal, today's verdict is likely to propel forward a new cultural and political debate in the 2000 elections over morality and the right to privacy, creating sharp lines of demarcation between the political parties, which have seen so many of their policy differences diluted in the Clinton years.

Some of the signs of the emerging debate were visible today as all sides tried to assess the meaning of a vote that saw both articles fall short of even majority support.

Democrats and some Republicans argued that the votes signaled that the House had erred in sending forth impeachment articles against the will of the public and on a partisan vote in December.

But Randy Tate, the executive director of the Christian Coalition, said the House prosecution, in defiance of public opinion, ''will be seen by history as an example of true American greatness.''

Mr. Tate deplored Mr. Clinton's acquittal, saying, ''Children now have the lesson that lying, cheating and breaking the law are permissible on the pathway to success.''

The failure to reach a majority, said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, ''reflected quite clearly the weakness of the House managers' case.'' He added, ''These articles should never have been brought in the first place.''

Senator John F. Kerry, another Massachusetts Democrat, who is weighing a Presidential bid, asked whether the many senators who were once prosecutors were ''not deeply disturbed by an independent counsel grilling a sitting President of the United States about his personal sex life, based on information from illegal phone recordings.''

The seeds of the impeachment saga were planted five years ago when Kenneth W. Starr was named independent counsel to investigate a real estate deal known as Whitewater. In January 1998, the investigation took a new tack with allegations that Mr. Clinton had had an affair with an intern and had induced her to submit a false affidavit in the sexual harassment suit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones.

In a deposition in the Paula Jones case taken on Jan. 17, 1998, Mr. Clinton laid the groundwork for the impeachment case by denying that he had ever had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky and by sitting silently as his lawyer brandished her false affidavit to support him.

In a finger-wagging televised appearance, Mr. Clinton denied to the nation that he had ever had sexual relations with ''that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.'' And for almost eight months, he steadfastly deceived aides and the country about his relationship with the intern. One aide told a grand jury that the President had called Ms. Lewinsky a ''stalker.''

Only in August, after it became known that Ms. Lewinsky had saved a stained blue dress that provided irrefutable evidence of their affair, did he tell a grand jury and the American public that he had had an ''inappropriate relationship'' with the young woman.

His belated and grudging confession did not stay the prosecutors. On Sept. 9, catching lawmakers off-guard, Mr. Starr delivered to Congress 36 boxes containing a report and supporting evidence of what he called ''substantial and credible information'' that Mr. Clinton had committed impeachable offenses.

The House vote to begin an investigation that would lead to the first impeachment proceedings since Watergate was 363 to 63, bipartisan and overwhelming. But the House Judiciary Committee, one of the most polarized panels in the House, split almost immediately along party lines as the committee released the entire Starr report. Soon all the lurid details of Mr. Clinton's affair were available on the Internet, and the public could see the videotape of Mr. Clinton's grand jury appearance.

The disputes were heightened as each side looked toward the midterm elections. Republicans lost five House seats in a repudiation thought to be partly a result of their focus on investigation and scandal.

Stunned by the election and determined to get the case over with rapidly, the committee returned in a lame-duck session and approved four articles of impeachment along party lines, accepting Mr. Starr's case without ever calling witnesses.

In December, after a bitter debate, the House narrowly approved two of the articles in near party-line votes.

From the start of the trial on Jan. 7, the Senate tried assiduously to avoid the partisan bitterness of the House. Fearful of public backlash, Senate Republicans forced the House prosecutors to scale back their witness list to only three and allowed only depositions to be taken. Democrats and many Republicans recoiled from the idea of Ms. Lewinsky testifying in the well of the Senate.

The Republicans also insisted on keeping the Senate's final deliberations behind closed doors. And for three days this week, the senators debated in private.

When the doors opened again today at noon, the exhausted senators were openly longing to return to legislation.

In the hushed chamber, senators stood one after another to pronounce Mr. Clinton guilty or not guilty. Some barely whispered their verdict. Others shouted it out with emphasis.

There was barely a stir at the moment when Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, cast the 34th vote of not guilty that guaranteed Mr. Clinton's acquittal on the first count of perjury, or when Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, cast the vote that assured his acquittal on the second count. But a low murmur broke out toward the end of the first roll call when the declaration of ''not guilty'' by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, brought to 10 the number of Republicans who broke with their party on the charge of perjury.

As the trial ended, and Mr. Lott bid farewell to Chief Justice Rehnquist, the relief was palpable. ''I would like to close with our traditional Mississippi parting: Y'all come back soon,'' the majority leader told the Chief Justice. He quickly added, as laughter broke out, ''But I hope that's not taken the wrong way. And not for an occasion like this one.''